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Originally Posted by homealone
I'm at work atm, so can't give precise instructions (we use Notes here, not Outlook Express), but in essence it is the same as adding a new email account
i.e. in Outlook Express in the 'accounts' dialog, choose 'add' & 'news' - DO NOT put your actual e-mail address as the 'reply' addy, use a made up one, the server name when requested is news.ntlworld.com.
- once the details are entered you will be invited to download the group headers.
Hope that makes sense  |
Or you could just click
news://text.news.ntlworld.com it should, assuming Outlook Express is installed on the users system. Invoke OE and present them with the newsserver address.
If OE isn't installed on the system. Then they could email "news://text.news.ntlworld.com" - without the quotes " " obviously, to themselves and click on the link in OE and it will activate the news portion of the program.
Also, you don't just "make an address up" as there is a high probability that you will choose a address or domain name that someone owns ie:
me@home.com or
me@theoffice.co.uk for instance are all taken. So infact, you should advise that a user creates a "disposable" ie: hotmail or yahoo address and input that into the requested email field.
Once the server address is entered, the user will receive a popup "You are not subscribed to any newsgroups in this account. Would you like to view a list of newsgroups?". Press "Ok", and a group download will begin. Once complete, you are given the option of subscribing to various groups.
In the "Display newsgroups which contain" type something like "politics", "computers" or "ntl" and a list of groups containing those words shall be displayed. The user can then double click the groups they are interested in, or highlight the group names and click "subscribe". Once they have made their choices to the groups which they subscribe, the click on "Ok" and the group names shall appear on the left side of the screen under their email accounts.
The user can then click on the group name ie: "ntl.announce", and download the headers for that group. Once that has completed, they can view the group content by highlighting a subject line in much the same way as they would view their email using OE.
One important factor to consider is that you need to "lurk" in groups before posting into them. Make yourself aware of how the groups operate, not to mention familiarise yourself with how posts are made ie: Highlight a group, File\New News Post and enter the relevant details as you would an email. If you get a reply to a post you made, you can then further contribute to a "thread" or discussion by highlighting the relevant subject header, right click, select "Reply to Group". When typing your message, reply at the bottom, not the top. Failure to familiarise yourself with such group conventions usually results in a user getting "flamed" which equates to being insulted. If the user refuses to change their ways, after being flamed the next thing that can happen is a report is sent to their ISP or NSP so they can warn the user as to what they are doing wrong.
Also worth a mention is. As an OE user, if you want to check or construct an email. Be sure to highlight the "Inbox" as otherwise you will still be in News Mode, which could be embarassing if you accidentaly send a private correspondence to a friend but it ends up on a newsserver instead.
All the above uses OE, which whilst not the most ideal newsgroup client, will give a user an introduction on how usenet and newsgroups work from a "text" perspective. If they want more on how the binaries aspect works, then google for "usenet downloading" and all your questions will be answered..